The Evil Within 2’s spooky new first-person mode needs to be seen

Even though most people have probably moved on from last year’s The Evil Within 2 by now, today Bethesda is giving you a new reason to dive back in for a second playthrough. Bethesda and developer Tango Gameworks today announced a new first-person mode for The Evil Within 2, giving you an entirely new way to play through the survival horror title.

This isn’t being offered as some kind of paid DLC either, but rather as a free update that’s available to all new and existing players. You can switch between third- and first-person perspective at any time as you’re playing the game, as Bethesda says that it’s easy as “flipping a switch” in the settings menu. Bethesda didn’t actually give specific directions on how to do it, but we’re assuming that it’s a pretty straightforward switch.

If you’ve yet to buy The Evil Within 2, Bethesda says that you’ll be able to access this feature in the free trial as well. Bethesda launched this free trial back at the beginning of December in order to entice curious horror fans who might be on the fence about buying the full game sight unseen. The free trial allows you to play through the game’s opening chapters, and if you decide to buy it afterward, the progress you made will carry over to the full game.

This is an interesting way to pull some players back to the game (or get the ones who intended to buy but never did to finally take the plunge), but maybe there are some deeper reasons for implementing this first-person mode? The Evil Within 2 seems like it would be a good fit for virtual reality, especially with the success that Resident Evil 7 found on PSVR. Perhaps Bethesda is planning to do something similar with The Evil Within 2 at some point down the road?

Granted, this is all speculation on my part, but with Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim VR already in the books, it’s clear that Bethesda is interested in bringing existing properties to virtual reality, and creating a first-person mode for The Evil Within 2 would be the first step in that process. Perhaps we’ll see a VR version of The Evil Within 2 sometime in the future, but for now, be sure to give the game’s first-person mode a spin for yourself.